Forum:Mayor of Kansas City
I'm finally reading 2F; it and the other library book I'd reserved came up at the same time, and the two week lending periods on each sadly overlap. At first I was going to give the other book priority (Rod Stewart's autobiography; my relative excitement about that really goes to show hoe much trouble I'm having finding truly compelling reading material these days), but it's just a lot of witty one-liners punctuating a story that's really not too interesting. Turtledove, on the other hand, is like shrugging on an old coat at this point, so in the end I decided to give him the priority--even as I become painfully aware that each battle/front line scene is something I've read literally hundreds of times before. Even the "Tanks are like penises" joke from Heinrich Jager's first scene isn't unique anymore. Also, they're all smoking so much you'd think the Rebs had recovered Lee's lost order eighty years before. Anyway, searching as ever for new historical characters, one line that caught my attention was Peggy listening to the news and learning that the mayor of KC had been arrested for corruption dating back thirty years in some cases. In 1942 the mayor was John Gage; he was a squeaky-clean reformer in the mold of Fiorello La Guardia. The crooked mayor he cleaned up after was Tom Pendergast, who fits the bill described. He left office under a cloud in 1940. Think the different outcome of Munich might have caused his prosecutors and political foes to move a bit more slowly? Turtle Fan (talk) 15:00, August 24, 2013 (UTC) :Well, no, Pendergast was never the mayor, he was the corrupt grey eminence of the city in something like a Boss Tweed mold. He did go to Leavenworth for income tax evasion in 1939, and the machine was pretty broken going forward. So having that off the cuff reference in 1942 does suggest some butterflies at work, anyway. ::Whoops, my mistake. The mayor clearly wasn't Gage, anyway; he wasn't crooked. Bryce Smith was mayor from 1930 to 1940; he tried to maintain some independence from Pendergast, with limited success, but did not confront Pendergast directly, and wound up being dragged down in Pendergast's wake. I don't think he'd be the mayor Peggy heard about. ::So some Federal prosecutor somewhere was so upset that the French and British were going to war on Czechoslovakia's behalf that he delayed opening the tax evasion case against Pendergast, and Pendergast stayed strong into the early 40s, so strong that he ultimately threw over Smith and replaced him with someone more closely under his thumb? Sometimes this timeline gets really weird. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:42, August 25, 2013 (UTC) :::I was thinking more along the lines of Turtledove remembering he's writing AH, and decided to throw in a random detail that didn't happen in OTL, because you can like totally do that in AH. TR (talk) 04:25, August 25, 2013 (UTC) ::::Forty years into an ATL, such games are harmless and can be fun. Four years in, you'd expect major developments like that to follow a lot more closely from the POD. (Well Kansas City machine politics aren't major alongside the shifting alliance systems of WWII or anything, nor is it a major plot point for the story, but something like that will have a noticeable impact in the lives of several thousand people at least, you know?) Turtle Fan (talk) 13:35, August 25, 2013 (UTC) :However, HT could be referencing something more subtle, since Pendergast was an early patron of Harry Truman. And, given the pacing, the 1944 election could take place in book 6.... TR (talk) 18:23, August 24, 2013 (UTC) ::Hmm, interesting idea; and when Truman appeared in TL-191, Flora did reflect on how distasteful his machine connections were. Truman was elected to the Senate in 1934. He faced an ugly but unsuccessful primary challenge from Lloyd Stark in 1940; Pendergast's fall had emboldened Stark to go after someone who would ordinarily have been under the boss's protection. From there it's a bit of a stretch to say that Stark would have won if he'd challenged a machine that was still going strong and won. And Peggy did say 1940 was a Democratic year, which doesn't necessarily rule out Truman being defeated in the general election, but makes it unlikely. Leaving aside a defeat in one election or the other followed by Pendergast offering the mayor's job as a booby prize, though, one has to wonder why Truman would willingly give up a Senate seat in favor of a mayoral one. Career politicians would generally view that as a big step backwards. :::Oh, I'm not saying it was Truman by any means (that's the kind of thing HT would have specifically referenced--see also the references to Leon Blum, Model, etc.). It just struck me as sort of interesting that Turtledove went out of his way to reference Truman's old stomping grounds while indirectly referencing the political machine that helped Truman get started. It could be important, I suppose. It's also quite likely that HT's trying to decide if he's going to do something with Truman or not, and that prompted the quicky reference. TR (talk) 04:25, August 25, 2013 (UTC) ::::Hmm, you're right. He's hardly ever that subtle with the foreshadowing. Turtle Fan (talk) 13:35, August 25, 2013 (UTC) ::Anyway, how about an article on "Mayor of Kansas City (TWTPE)" or something? Turtle Fan (talk) 02:42, August 25, 2013 (UTC) :::An addition to the minor characters, anyway. TR (talk) 04:25, August 25, 2013 (UTC)